Acute bacterial infections in the human body cause many effects including severe tissue damage. It has been found that normal patients who have bacterial infections (either gram negative or positve) should normally produce a series of nonspecific metabolic responses to the invading pathogen. These metabolic responses tend to alleviate the symptoms associated with such tissue damage and in particular enhance the body's ability to limit tissue damage and reduce the likelihood of the patient ultimately succumbing to the pathogen.
There are large numbers of people who become infected but have substantially diminished capability to produce the normal metabolic responses to such tissue damage. These individuals are generally those who are protein malnourished and surprisingly constitute a substantial portion of those patients who become infected. Protein malnourished patients are normally considered as those having a serum albumin level of less than about 3.2 gm/dl.
With the present invention it is now possible to provide parenteral therapy to such humans (patients), to first initiate and then maintain the normal metabolic response which would ordinarily be set off in normal humans to promote the human's ability to overcome invading bacteria. In this invention a sufficient amount of LEM (leukocyte endogenous mediator, also sometimes known as leukocyte pyrogen, endogenous pyrogen, lymphocyte activating factor or Interleukin I) is parenterally administered to raise the body temperature of a human above normal and usually at least about 1.degree. C. With this invention it is now possible to marshall the human's ability to fight off, by stimulating the human's metabolism, tissue damage and to reduce increased morbidity and mortality which are often associated with bacterial infections in protein malnourished human patients.
LEM (endogenous pyrogen) is a well known material. It may be classified as a hormone in that it appears to be a substance which is produced in one region of the body and transported to another region where it induces a specific bodily response. The isolation and various experiments with same have been reported in the scientific literature for many years. See:
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